Conservative or Liberal, Deist or Pagan, Jersey transplant or Lehigh Valley native, we're all in this mess together. Let's talk. Let us do no harm. Today's one-liner: "The shortest way to the distinguishing excellence of any writer is through his hostile critics." Richard LeGallienne

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Monday, June 20, 2016

Jennings: Hospitals Need to Do More

Lehigh Valley Health Network dodged a bullet recently when Lehigh County jurist Brian Johnson decided that it's doing enough - $354 million worth - to satisfy its charitable mission. The person who thought differently, Robert Young, is himself a retired judge. He's not alone. Community organizer Alan Jennings, helmsman at CACLV, said the hispital has a moral, of not legal, obligation to do more, especially for those in the throes of mental illness or a heroin addiction.

“Behavioral health problems impede every aspect of our region’s quality of life,” Jennings said. “They impair worker productivity, destroy families, fill our jails, cost infinite amounts of money and diminish the success of even the best healthcare in the Lehigh Valley. LVHN CEO Brian Nester, an extraordinarily gifted entrepreneur and physician, has an historic opportunity and obligation to lead the way.”

Coroner statistics, which show a marked increase in drug overdose deaths, do not lie.

Also, does anyone really disput that mental illness has more than a little to do with recent mass shootings?

Jennings reported that he has met with dozens of representatives of non-profit organizations and spoken with countless people in the region, all of whom have stories to tell. “Every one of us, while still sensitive to the stigma attached to mental illness and drug and alcohol addiction, has a friend, a family member or a coworker who struggles to cope,” Jennings said. He offered CACLV’s assistance in the endeavor to Nester.

Free market medicine is not about healing or care, it is about making money. Health Insurance companies, Big Parma, medical device manufacturers push the profit motive. Do people cry about the number of needless deaths in hospitals due to infections due to carelessness? Instead of bragging about five star chefs and restaurant style menus, care should be at the forefront.

Hospitals are big shining monuments to greed and ego, somewhere in all of that care is given.

I'm sure as a Progressive democrat, Mr Jennings was a vocal critic of the Allentown State Hospital and was part of the effort to shut it down; turning all of the patients out into the street to fend for themselves.

Now I find it ironic he wants to shake down LVHN for money to treat those same mental patients he helped to toss out onto the street a decade or so ago.

Non-profits do not like to invest in bottomless pits. They follow the money - meaning if there is a grant out there, they will go for that so not to spend too much of their own $. Until large dollars start going into grants for MH and addiction, you won't see too much done.

O'Hairy only allows Kelton to teabag because she's a hot blonde, not sure why Lil Scooter Armstrong is permitted to spew his hate. Bring back the ducking stool and start with the editors of the Blaze and Breitbart report who have poisoned the feeble mind of our own Anne Coulter doppelgänger Jamie Kelton.